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“It’s a poison that contaminates and has wounded America for centuries, it’s called racism and the healing process will never begin until the U.S. government does right by the descendants of slaves brought here from Africa,” says Robert “Fleetwood” Bowden, director of the powerful new documentary film “Gimmie Mines Reparations.” He’ll be screening it at the Bayview Library, 5075 3rd St., at 6:30pm on Wednesday, Feb. 22, for a Black History Celebration. You’re invited and urged to bring family and friends to this free event.

Robert “Fleetwood” Bowden, an emerging filmmaker, community activist, TV producer, radio host and best-selling author took the South to Southwest journey in reverse. He left San Francisco and took his movement to Houston. He introduced his movement to the residents of this huge city known as Htown.

Robert “Fleetwood” Bowden’s “Da Cotton Pickas” is a must see documentary about how slavery did not stop with the Emancipation Proclamation. In fact, some people who were sharecropping slaves are still alive today, like Bishop Henry Williams, the subject of this monumental documentary. He worked for over 18 years and was never paid for picking cotton. Fleetwood tells a story of a historical reality with this documentary that most have never heard.

I’ve been hearing a lot lately about a “Cotton Pickas” documentary due out Black History Month 2015. And I’m finally sitting down with the director, Robert “Fleetwood” Bowden. “Da Cotton Pickas,” explores the trials and tribulations of Southern cotton plantation workers following the abolition of slavery in America. Red carpet film tour screenings Feb. 7, 21, 24 and 27 – all free!

Given the trajectory of 2014 regarding Black lives, perhaps February would be a great time to reflect on what bell hooks calls “the love ethic,” a principle Dr. King embodied and preached. Langston Hughes would have been 116 on Feb. 1 (his mother, Carrie Langston, was born Jan. 22, 1873). Albert Woodfox will be 68 on Feb. 19. Hopefully he will be eating cake under some sunny sky, a freed man by then.

On Sept. 13, 2014, the most progressive of the Bay Area’s Black and pro-Black journalists came together to celebrate one another and to give awards to a well deserving few. It was also a salute to the real legacy of Black journalism in the United States that was born out of the fight for human rights and self-determination. The night was dedicated to the memory of the recently transitioned journalist and editor Kevin Weston.

From the moment the doors opened on the evening of Sept. 13, it was apparent that the honoring of our global African media would begin its night of empowerment with the tradition of honoring one of the community’s foremost elders. We celebrated the 82 years of life and struggle of Dr. Willie Ratcliff and Dr. Ratcliff’s 22 years of Black media ownership of the San Francisco Bay View newspaper. Black Media Appreciation Night 2014 was filled with wisdom, communication and the exchange of knowledge, as well as people receiving awards for life changing, revolutionary work.

Every two years, Block Report Radio and the SF Bay View newspaper get together to sponsor Black Media Appreciation Night, a night when we honor the very best in Black media from around the Bay Area. BMAN 2014 is Saturday, Sept. 13, 7 p.m., at the African American Art and Culture Complex (AAACC), 762 Fulton, San Francisco. Tickets at EventBrite (click the banner above). Headliners are pianist Kev Choice, comedian Donald E. Lacy, and Phavia Kujichagulia and Ma’at. Read on for the full list of honorees … and more.

Congratulations to William Rhodes on a successful trip to South Africa, where he took a quilt created by his students at Dr. Charles Drew Elementary School in San Francisco to honor the legacy of an international hero, President Nelson Mandela, and returned with art panels from workshops conducted with youth in various townships and regions from Cape Town to Johannesburg.

First it was being a rapper, then an author. Now the Bay Area-based renaissance man known as Fleetwood, aka Robert Bowden, has taken it to the next level with his new documentary, “I Just Wanna Ball,” which has been selected to play at the San Francisco Black Film Festival on Saturday, June 14, 4 p.m., at the Lush Life Gallery, 1320 Fillmore St. in the Jazz Heritage Center, San Francisco.

The first in a series of empowerment workshops, “Full Court Press to Success,” will be held on Saturday, Feb. 8, 4-5:30 p.m. at the Bayview Opera House. The workshop features the new documentary film, “I Just Wanna Ball,” by Robert “Fleetwood” Bowden about the McClymonds High School Lady Warriors championship team of 2013.

During the year 2013, the McClymonds High School girls basketball team became a powerhouse. Within a two-year period, they went from a program known for decades as a loser to winners of Oakland’s athletic league, the first since 1976. What they accomplished on the court was definitely staggering, but the bigger breakthrough was off the court.

Davey D, host of KPFA’s Hard Knock Radio and a well known and respected community activist and advocate, will headline the Homeboy Hotline’s first annual fundraiser celebration on Saturday, June 23, 2-4 p.m., at Hibiscus Restaurant, located at 1745 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. Donations raised will fund the work of HBH, a nonprofit organization that provides support, resources and hope to the formerly incarcerated.